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Bacow Talks To Media

Boston [05.10.01] Just moments after university officials announced he will be Tufts' 12th president, Lawrence Bacow told a room full of reporters that he is honored and excited to lead the four-campus institution.

"The future of Tufts is incredibly bright and it is a tremendous honor to be chosen to help lead and shape that future," he told the Associated Press.

Citing everything from record-high applications to the university's cutting-edge research, Bacow said Tufts is in a terrific position.

"This is an institution that gained enormous stature in the last 10 to 20 years," he said in an article in today's New York Times. "It's gone from being a regional institution to one that has national and international stature."

And the president-elect said he welcomes the opportunity to continue to strengthen Tufts.

"As long as you're doing your job well, you're always starting new things," he said in today's Boston Globe. "My job is to make sure we're doing our best to compete with (schools like MIT). We'll be tough competitors."

According to the London-based newspaper The Guardian, Bacow will continue to develop Tufts' global focus. "The world today is being influenced by a number of common trends and some of the most important scholarly questions lie at the edges, not the centre of traditional disciplines," he said in the Guardian's article.

University leaders will be asking Bacow "to take Tufts to its next level," Nathan Gantcher -- chair of Tufts' Board of Trustees -- told the Boston Herald.

"I think we get a real strong academic leader who was not only a great teacher at MIT, but a great administrator," Gantcher said.

At yesterday's press conference, Bacow told reporters that he hopes to use his skills from MIT in his role at Tufts.

According to the New York Times, "Dr. Bacow, who earned his bachelor's degree at MIT in 1972, said he hoped to build on a similar spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship at Tufts, where experts on nutrition and international diplomacy have already collaborated on efforts to ease world hunger, and where engineers have sought to improve the practice of dentistry."

Much of Tufts' current success can be linked with the leadership of current president John DiBiaggio.

The Associated Press reported that DiBiaggio oversaw tremendous growth at Tufts, citing the construction of a new $60 million research center as one such example.

The New York Times added, "During Dr. DiBiaggio's nine-year tenure, the Tufts endowment has tripled, to nearly $600 million." Endowed chairs have also dramatically increased as well.